Haunted Organic Read online

  “Loser,” he muttered. Josie had no respect for Grotty.

  There was a pic of Rasha, the girl who lived down the street, doing a back 360 kick-flip off the beach stairs. She was a skateboarding star. Surf girl. Wore her hair in a towering mohawk with pieces dyed pink, green, and blue. In real life, he couldn't even look at her, because her awesomeness was so huge.

  He scrolled some more.

  Some new girl was moving in across the street from the Organic Food Shop, kitty-corner to his house.

  “Maybe she'll see a ghost baby, too.”

  He pushed the thought away.

  He scrolled some more.

  Nothing about him or for him. The usual. It was like he didn't exist in the world. He liked that and hated it all at once.

  He stuck the phone into the front pocket of his jeans, threw his backpack over his shoulder, put in his ear buds, and slammed the door behind him.

  He promised himself not to think about any of it for the rest of the day.

  two

  LITTLE FINGERS

  “But I just want three crabs,” Mrs. Kippelibby explained frantically, her arms flapping like the wings of an angry turkey.

  After school, Josie walked the long winding cliff path, overlooking the endless ocean. He liked the sea wind, the smell of salt and the sound of gulls. He walked slowly, listening to Ayo Leilani. No reason to hurry.

  He stopped across the street when he heard Mrs. Kippelibby freaking out at Ludivine Salt. An old lady brawl outside the Organic Food Shop could be entertaining.

  “I don’t think so. Those are spoken for,” said Ludivine Salt, in her taut way that signaled no negotiation.

  He pulled his ear buds out of his ears so he could hear better.

  There was a massive truck parked outside the Organic Food Shop, with the words, "Huxley's Fish & Crustacean Emporium" written across the side. Three muscled blokes were dragging flats of live blue crab off the truck and dumping them on wheeled carts used to stock shelves inside the market.

  “There must be 500, 800 crab here,” continued Mrs. Kippelibby, exasperated. “You can’t spare three of them for my dinner?”

  “There's 1,100 blue crabs to be exact, Mrs. Kippelibby. And no, I cannot spare even one,” said Ludivine, unfazed by Mrs. Kippelibby’s dinner needs.

  “But we have some lovely broccoli rabe. Have some of that.”

  Ludivine tossed a bunch of broccoli rabe Mrs. Kippelibby's way, smacking her in the left cheek. Ludivine barely noticed and did not apologize.

  “Well, I never!” Mrs. Kippelibby, flushed and irritated, rubbing her cheek.

  And then Ludivine packed the last of the crab onto a cart. She turned and looked across the street at Josie. Her lips never moved, her face didn't change, yet Josie distinctly heard her crisp, unwavering voice rush through his ears.

  “Want to come to the feeding, Mr. Brown?"

  And even though her face was a stone, Josie knew that Ludivine was smiling at him.

  ✽✽✽

  Josie was so freaked out, he barely noticed a moving van pulling up to the curb.

  He could still hear Ludivine’s voice clamoring through him, a current of electricity bouncing around his brain.

  A girl about his age hopped out. She was small and thin, her eyes were intense and sharp. Her hair was long and dark, and trailed down her back in a long thick braid. Josie thought the braid looked like a serpent connected to the back of her head. He half expected the thing to jump up and slink around with a life of its own.

  The girl looked at him for a moment, and then looked toward the Organic Food Shop. She had an old leather portfolio stuffed with papers, photos, under her arm. She clutched it closely to her side, as if someone might leap out and try to steal it.

  She lingered there, just staring at the shop, and then she turned back to Josie.

  “Hi,” she mouthed.

  Her face was open and kind, but not so friendly that he felt uncomfortable. There was something very serious about this girl, maybe even a little sad, although she was holding that as tightly as her leather case.

  He smiled a little back, but not so much that it invited her to come over and talk to him.

  A man got out of the driver’s side, her dad, he thought. And they went into the little house on the corner of Farrelly and Tamarama, exactly across the street from the Organic Food Shop.

  Josie had a new neighbor.

  ✽✽✽

  Josie sat on the stone steps that led up to the little porch of his house for what was, he figured, the better part of the late afternoon and into the evening.

  He didn't want to be in his room, or inside his house alone, in case he saw some new ghost baby or something.

  He was eating a Vegemite sandwich, listening to Vance Joy, waiting for his parents to come home. They rarely came home before 8pm.

  His parents, Phyllis and Portland Brown were Chief Financial Officers, or CFOs. Portland handled the money for a laxative company and Phyllis for a company that made hemorrhoid ointment. They worked endless hours, often at their offices in the city proper, and just as often at home, locked up in their office, tapping away on their laptops, sometimes arguing and speaking some weird financial language, sometimes pouring over spreadsheets and numbers at the kitchen table.

  He loved them because, as a child, he was meant to love them, and he assumed that they loved him because, as parents, they had to, but he didn’t know them in any real way or understand them, and he was quite sure they didn’t know or understand him.

  Josie ate the last crumbs of his sandwich and watched kids racing by on their bikes or kicking footballs in the street, playing hard while the evening’s light lingered.

  That’s when he saw her, Rasha running behind her little brother, Musa, as she taught him skateboard tricks. Her dog, Bacon, a thick-headed, stubby-legged French bulldog, ran behind them, occasionally veering off to pounce on a blowing leaf, or to sniff around a tree and pee on it.

  “That dog is the stupidest looking thing,” he thought.

  It was one big black head on legs like chicken drumsticks. The idea of a dog running around on drumsticks made him smile, even though he knew the joke was dumb and he was telling it only to himself.

  Josie watched them until they disappeared at the end of the street. Rasha did not turn to look at him, or wave hello. Josie knew she had no idea he even existed. He was scenery. His blandness, he imagined, bleached him into the background, so that he couldn’t be seen by someone like her.

  A tiny part of him burned with anger at such unfairness, yet the larger part simply accepted it as fact. He pushed it out of his brain.

  Josie turned away, and saw something weird just down the street.

  There was a little girl standing in front of her house. Her name was Trinket Parsnips and whenever Josie saw her, he thought her hair, which was flame red, and a heap of curls, looked like a halo of fire around her head.

  Usually she played on the front lawn, while one of her Mum’s, either Gerty or Frida, kept a close eye on her. Trinket was a runner. A hopper. A jumper. A skipper. She was a constantly moving, tumbling, twirling little kid. But now, Trinket was in the middle of the street, and Josie noticed, she was still.

  Completely still.

  Her body had gone slack, off-center a bit, like she was a mangled doll. And that's when Josie saw her eyes. He got up off the steps and walked down the path to the sidewalk.

  The closer he got, the more he could see that her eyes had rolled up into her head, and her neck looked bent, her head lolling to the side. She was on her tip-toes, like she was hanging from an invisible rope around her neck.

  “Trinket!”

  He yelled at her, although he’d never talked to the girl or used her name before.

  “Trinket!” he screamed again.

  Her head slowly turned toward him, her white eyes boring into him.

  He looked around to see if anyone else could see what he was seeing, but life was going on as usual. No one noti
ced him or the child in the street.

  He looked over to her house and saw Gerty washing dishes in the kitchen window.

  “Ms. Parsnips!” he yelled, but she was distracted by something behind her and left the window to attend to it.

  Trinket was moving now, her tip toes scooping the ground, but her legs soft and dangling, were not supporting her. She drifted toward Josie, her body spastic and pulling to the left, as if her backbone had been broken and bent.

  Josie sucked in his breath.

  It was like the ghost baby all over again.

  Trinket moved right up to him, near his face. He could smell the fish and the sea coming off her breath. Her eyes were white globes. She opened her mouth to speak to him.

  “He’s coming for me...”

  Her voice was the same, the little girl. The one he heard giggling and shouting in the front yard. Ludivine was not in this child.

  Josie grabbed Trinket by her shoulders.

  “Who’s coming?...Tell me. Who's coming?” he shouted at Trinket, shaking her shoulders.

  “He’s coming for me...”

  “Who? Who?” He shook her again, trying to bring her back or force the information out of her.

  “You’ll help me, Josie...Right, Josie?”

  It seemed strange to him that she knew his name. They had never spoken. But then he remembered Ludivine knew his name, too.

  “Who’s coming? You have to tell me...I need more information!” he screamed at the girl.

  What was happening to him? Why was all this happening? His mind raced, but nothing made sense. He was sure he was going mad.

  Then, as quickly as it started, it was over. Trinket fell into his arms, limp as if someone had sucked out all her bones and nothing was left but tissue and blood, and he held her there on the sidewalk.

  That’s when he heard the screaming.

  Gerty Parsnips was running across the street, screaming something, but he wasn't quite sure what it was. His mind was foggy, saturated, thick.

  “Get away from my baby!” Gerty screamed at him and gathered the lump of the child’s body, and her being, into her arms.

  “Don't you ever touch my child again, pervert, or I’ll call the police!" she screamed at him, and gave him a look that made him feel so low and small, he thought he might melt away, and vanish into the sidewalk.

  Then, she was gone. Strutting across the sidewalk and out into the street, angry, patting her baby on the back. Little bunches of curious people gathered and watched Josie and chatted amongst themselves about what they thought they saw.

  That’s when Josie saw Trinket’s head rise up, just a little, off her mother’s shoulder, her curls tumbling down over her face. And without opening her mouth, Josie felt her sweet voice tumbling over him.

  “Don't forget me, Josie. When Bangkok comes…don’t forget me.”

  Bangkok. That name again.

  The screen door of the Parsnip’s house swung closed, and they were gone. It was nearly dark, the sun had settled down low behind the Sydney skyline. A red car pulled into his driveway.

  Josie was never so happy to see his parents.

  ✽✽✽

  Phyllis and Portland were in the middle of a discussion. Some kind of accounting kerfuffle. One saw it one way, the other another way.

  “Oh please, those numbers were way off,” his mother said, pulling her briefcase from the car’s back seat. “Guy’s probably stealing money from the company.”

  Portland was texting with his thumbs.

  “Who knows? But if Blister (George Blister was his boss and the head of the company) finds out he is being accused of skimming money off the top of the charity drive at his kid’s school, well, that will be the end of him, you know.” He said, it half-listening.

  “That firm of yours, so many crazies”

  “For Pete’s sake, Phyllis, our company has a no-tolerance policy for bad press. You get your name in the paper, you lose your job, plain and simple. What more can Blister do?”

  “Oh, hi Josie,” his Mum looked up and saw him.

  “Hey kid,” his Dad ruffled his hair as he walked up the steps.

  “Hi,” he said, standing in a daze on the sidewalk.

  “Watcha doin’ out here? You know there’s a bag of fish nuggets in the freezer if you’re hungry?” his Mum said, completely unaware that her son had any problems at all.

  “I know. I just wanted to wait for you...” Josie said, pulling himself back to reality and moving down the path toward his house. His parents met him there.

  “Okay kid, c’mon in.” Portland said, sort of pushing Josie though the door. “You know, I gotta make one call to London before business opens there. Diarrhea is HUGE in Britain! Then we can hang out.”

  Josie rolled his eyes. He was pretty sure his Dad had never just “hung out” in his life.

  “Um, something happened. Can we talk?” Josie didn't normally turn to his parents for anything, but he felt so unsure of what was happening, he needed to do something.

  “I’m going to get dinner and have to do a budget for a new hemorrhoid cream. This one will smell like lavender, very exciting product. Do you want to talk about something special, honey?

  “No, just...I’ve been having these nightmares,” he started. “And weird things have been happening.”

  "Well everyone has nightmares, sweetheart,” his mother interrupted, pouring herself a wine from a big box in the fridge.

  “I know, but these are different. And this thing just happened with the little girl across the street...” He took a deep breath. “I-I-I feel like there's something wrong with me.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with you, Josie.” she said, taking a big swig from her glass.

  “You just need to spend less time alone. You should go to a cricket match with some of the boys in your class or go surfing after school.”

  “I know. I’m fine...I mean, the dreams. They’re...”

  “You should take yoga,” his Dad said cheerfully, as if that wasn’t the stupidest idea Josie had ever heard.

  “Uh, thanks Dad, but these dreams, they’re connected to the Organic Food Shop next door, I think...” Josie started.

  His Mum was pulling boxes of frozen food from the freezer with one hand and throwing them in the microwave with the other. He talked and followed her around the kitchen.

  “Oh, you know Trudy Hosselbaum broke her leg in there yesterday. She said an octopus, or an iguana, or something grabbed her ankle and tripped her, “ she told Josie, and then laughed.

  “That woman is a nutbag, you know what I mean?...ha, ridiculous, an octopus tripped her...”

  “Mum...” Josie interrupted.

  “I-I-I know it sounds crazy, maybe I’m crazy, but weird things have been happening.”

  “Like what honey?” his Mum asked, shoving a cracker in her mouth, taking a swig of wine.

  “There was a rotting baby, and then there was this dream about me drowning, and then just-just-just now, Trinket Parsnips passed out in my arms.”

  “Oh, Gerty and Frida are such lovely people, aren’t they?” his mother interjected.

  Phyllis was especially proud that she knew a family that had two Mums, as if this made her cooler. She told everyone they were great friends, although Josie was quite sure she had never actually had a conversation with either Gerty or Frida.

  “We should have them over for dinner next week!” she said excitedly.

  “Yeah, yeah, sure,” he said, quickly, knowing how truly difficult it was for her to focus on him. He would have to be blunt before he lost her.

  “Mum, I think something bad is going to happen to Trinket, like a monster is going to take her, or do something bad.”

  There. He got it out. Now they knew. He felt better. They would call Ms. Parsnips and warn her, or talk to the police.

  “Monster? Oh honey, you’ve always been such a creative spirit,” she said, pulling the hair out of his eyes and looking at him.

  No matter how har
d she looked, she didn’t see him.

  His father, resting against the kitchen counter, chuckled. Josie realized he was laughing at an email on his phone. He wasn't even listening.

  “Can we do this after my budget?” Phyllis interjected, taking a long gulp of wine and pulling a box of food from the microwave.

  “I’ll be up for hours if I don’t get a start on it,” she said.

  “Um, uh....”

  His Dad’s mobile buzzed and he palmed it to his ear.

  “G’day Bob! How are ya? Yeah, I got it right here.” He juggled his phone and his papers and gave Josie a five-minute sign.

  Then he was gone, talking to Bob in the other room. His Mum shuffling her own papers, picked Hawaiian ham steak from a plastic tray, her mind on lavender-smelling hemorrhoid cream.

  Josie stood in the kitchen, watching his family spread out in all directions like glassy, hollow marbles rolling in a maze.

  He was all alone.

  ✽✽✽

  Josie didn’t want to go to his room. Much too close to the Organic Food Shop.

  And there wouldn't be anymore confessions to his parents. They were impenetrable, staring into their screens like bleary-eyed zombies. He decided to watch TV in the living room.

  He flipped on The Walking Dead, because he liked those kinds of zombies. It amused him that humans were so stupid. They were always freaking out, running away from slow, clumsy zombies, hiding in stairwells that led to locked doors, or rooftops with no way out, and were surprised when the zombies found them, and ate them.

  Josie would never hide in a place with no way out. If he survived the apocalypse, he would carry a weapon, a saber, a knife, a pipe, something. He was sure of that.

  And that was what he was thinking when a giant moray eel burst through the television screen onto the floor in front of him.

  Josie jumped up, and tried to hurl himself over the couch. The eel was huge, meaty and fast, slithering through the room, as if the air were its sea. It was black, with a mouth of rasping, biting, teeth, its face convulsed into an ugly death grin. It hissed as it slithered toward him, over the coffee table, chairs and couch, until it was inches away, tripping him up. Josie crashed onto the floor.